Body, mind and Qi.

[Miffymog]

Another long post for those who are bored and have too much time on their hands

 

This is basically tying up some of the things mentioned in some of the recent post on Qi and other things.

 

A while ago I took a basic philosophy cause, and the first question asked was what was the difference between the mind and the body? I came up with my answer and wrote my essay that got a rubbish mark, but my friend who was taking the same course liked my answer. It came to mind again after reading a number of recent posts and it happens to tie in with some of the discussions with Qi, especially the one about using electricity to boost it.

 

So what was my answer to the difference between the body and mind? Well, I'm going to use probably a completely inaccurate model of an amoeba to explain it. What is the mind of an amoeba? Lets pretend that part of the amoeba detects whether there is food in a particular direction and there is another part which acts as its 'muscle' or the mechanism that moves it (I'm assuming that these are both functions of this simple life form). So, what is the mind of the amoeba? It is that purposeful signal that travels from the food detecting part of the cell to the muscle part of the cell which tells the muscle which way to move it. Not sure what manner this signal takes, it's not important for this essay, but lets just say there is a signal. Now, the signal itself does not actually do anything, it is merely transmits information.

 

Lets now upscale this to the human body. The mind, therefore, is any part of the body that is used to transfer (and process) information. The body is what does something with the information – in the context of this philosophical question. This leads on to the idea that the mind is not only in the brain, but it also consist of the nervous system as well.

 

Given that electric charge is some aspect of the nervous system, then this means there can be an interaction between electricity and the mind. I'm now going to start introducing the lose idea that mind and Qi are very similar, and tie this in with the 'mind/body question' and what is Qi?

 

The human body also encompasses hormones. Hormones don't tend to do anything themselves, instead, they are the bodies way of getting different parts of itself to communicate with each other. This means they are most definitely part of the mind, and in this context, also a component of Qi.

 

So far I have deliberated only mentioned information transferring systems that do nothing more. These are rather evolved systems, so I'm now going on to explain more fundamental information transferral and tie this into the Qi/mind of trees? Why, because trees have Qi but they don't respond much to electricity, like we do, so what's the difference?

 

Information (Qi?) can be passed through a system in many ways, the nervous system and hormones is one example, but there are others where the information now 'does stuff'. Take, for example, the concentration of either oxygen or carbon dioxide in the blood. Here, the information of 'how much carbon dioxide or oxygen is there in the blood?' is the very thing which is what it is. i.e., the oxygen is what helps the cells to respire, and the carbon dioxide is the waste product. Both information transference and doing. So, the concentration of these gases in the blood, are now part of the mind in the body/mind question, and part of our Qi.

 

So, with trees, although they do not use an electrical nervous system, they still need to transfer information around themselves, which is mainly done through the sap. The sap, for example, not only contains water, but this also simultaneously describes how much water the tree has. And the cells in the leaves can act accordingly. So the tree has Qi (an information transferral mechanism) but they are not so bothered by you trying to pass a small electric current down them.

 

There are some other implications of this too. For example, when you are involved in a conversation with someone, information is transferring so that person is, in effect becoming part of your mind / Qi.

 

And black holes now take up a role as (theoretical) locations where information can not come out. They no longer transfer information with the outside world and so do not exchange Qi with it also.

 

 

So, information transferral is an important part of Qi - but so is energy, but that is a slightly different matter.

 

 

Miffmog.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Miffymog